ABSTRACT
Edith Rigby was born in 1873, the daughter of a Preston doctor. Her suffragette activities, which included planting a bomb in the Liverpool Corn Exchange, pouring acid on the green of a local golf course, and setting fire to the stands of Blackburn Rovers’ football club, resulted in her being a guest at His Majesty’s pleasure some seven times. During her imprisonment she went on hunger strike and consequently suffered forced feeding. After setting fire to Lord Leverhulme’s house at Rivington Pike in 1913 she declared from the dock:
I want to ask Sir William Leverhulme whether he thinks his property on Rivington Pike is more valuable as one of his superfluous houses occasionally opened to people, or as a beacon lighted to King and Country to see here are some intolerable grievances for women.1
